“A Needle Was Nothing in Comparison with a Nail”

Gabriela Lemos Lechini’s life changed September 7, 2012, just four days after her 21st birthday. She was a Latter-day Saint from Rivera, Uruguay, and moved to Montevideo in 2010 to attend college. She had just received a job offer after a long search and was looking forward to sending in her mission papers. On September 7, she was struck by a truck while crossing the street. She suffered a head injury, fractured femur, ligament damage, and injuries to the nerves in her neck.

She was rushed to the hospital, where her bishop was the first to arrive. Sometime later her sister arrived, and a few hours later, her mother, Nelda Lechini, who traveled to the hospital as soon as she knew Gabriela was hospitalized. Her mother stayed there every day. Gabriela endured two surgeries during her more than two-month stay in the hospital, and she had a third surgery several months later. Gabriela shared the Book of Mormon with one of her nurses, who still kept the book on the bedside table a year later.

Elder Francisco J. Viñas of the Seventy visited Gabriela at the hospital, and asked her an unexpected question: “Do you have faith not to be healed?” Gabriela’s bishop told her she would receive her endowment and serve in the temple. She left the hospital in November, using a wheelchair. She began serving as a temple worker in the Montevideo Uruguay Temple. The Montevideo temple matron, Lilian Ventura, said, “Gabriela was always smiling.”

Miracles in Gabriela’s life have not ceased since the car accident. Complications from the accident and a previously diagnosed hernia in her lower back initially prevented her from serving a mission. However, on August 1, 2017, she was called to serve as a missionary in the Chile Santiago North Mission. After returning home, she experienced a long chain of miracles that led her to becoming a Brigham Young University–Idaho student and finding her eternal companion.

Gabriela recognizes that limitations and pain are the ways in which the Lord reminds her of the reality of His healing power and also how “the Lord’s way is always better than ours.” She still struggles with health complications. In 2021, doctors discovered that her lower back discs were currently healthy, as if she had never had a hernia. However, she had developed arthritis in her lower back.

Gabriela came to understand the atonement from a different perspective because of her disability. She remembered feeling indescribable pain during an electric nerve study that involved large needles piercing her skin, muscles, and nerves. “In that moment, I remembered the thorns in His head, the nails in His hands. I felt that a needle was nothing in comparison with a nail. If he could bear nails, then I could bear needles.” Because of Gabriela’s pain, she was able to better understand the Savior’s love and sacrifice.